Glen Echo: 'Pocket neighborhood'

Residents around Glen Echo Ravine love their little urban oasis but worry that they lack the clout to protect it
Monday, July 13, 2009 3:04 AM
By Mark Ferenchik
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Glen Echo Ravine might be among Columbus' underappreciated assets, a green and inviting getaway that winds below a sometimes loud and belligerent city.
While a nearby train horn bellows and a jet angling for a Port Columbus landing roars overhead, a visitor can descend into a little tranquillity, wandering an area that looks more like the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania than tabletop central Ohio.
It's a big reason that people have chosen to live nearby. But its seclusion also has led some to believe that neighborhood leaders and City Hall don't listen to their needs.
"It shows distinctly how isolated we are," said Martha Buckalew, a longtime neighborhood leader who helped lead an unsuccessful effort two years ago to break away from the University Area Commission and join the Clintonville Area Commission.
That idea seems to be dead for now. The University Area Commission would have to dissolve and reconstitute itself for Glen Echo to leave. And Clintonville Area Commissioner Mike McLaughlin said there doesn't seem to be the political will.
In addition, a big issue -- a leaking, smelly sanitary sewer line through the ravine -- seems to have been resolved. The city just spent $2.5 million to reline the 1928-era sewer and replace manholes that erupted during heavy rainstorms.
The homes are from roughly the same era, clustered along the south edge of the ravine in a tree-filled neighborhood where Ohio State University professors and employees live along with other professionals, retirees and some students.
Christopher O'Leary, who lives there, said Glen Echo's character -- its house styles, the high percentage of homeowners versus renters -- reminds him more of Clintonville than the University District.
O'Leary, a freelance illustrator who grew up in Youngstown, called it an old-fashioned neighborhood where people sit on their front porches.
"We love this neighborhood," he said. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997 after residents petitioned for it because they wanted to discourage people from demolishing houses, said Therese Nolan, a resident who worked for the designation.
"It's just a dear little enclave," she said. "It was really a 1920 streetcar-commuter neighborhood."
The Columbus Real Estate and Improvement Co. bought 47 acres in 1908 at what was then the city's northern edge. The city annexed the land in 1910, and developers marketed it as a scenic area connected to the city by streetcar. "My husband calls it a pocket neighborhood," said Amy Youngs, a California native who moved to the Glen Echo neighborhood from the Short North five years ago.
The ravine is the big feature that attracts home buyers.
You can't drive into the ravine. Gates and posts block cars from entering.
A creek winds along the path. There's little litter and only a smattering of graffiti under the Arcadia Avenue and Indianola Avenue bridges, where the city demonstrated its anti-graffiti cameras two years ago.
In 1999, the Friends of the Ravine began restoring the north slope.
Julie Boyland remembers the ravine as pristine when she and her husband bought their Glenmawr Avenue house for $11,000 in 1965. About the same time, I-71 was being built nearby, bringing a stream of pollution into the ravine's creek.
Since then, officials and residents have worked to try to keep it clean.
Some homes in the neighborhood now go for more than $200,000.
"Our neighborhood is a stable neighborhood," Buckalew said.
Folks come together to care for neighborhood gardens.
One is a flower garden in the median of N. 4th Street. Another is on a hillside overlooking 4th and Hudson streets. The community garden began this year with 37 folks taking care of individual plots of tomatoes and peppers, radishes and lettuce.
Some of the food is donated to a local pantry for the needy, said Trish Dehnbostel, a manager for Local Matters, a nonprofit group that promotes locally grown food.
Nelson Jeck gave the group permission to put the garden plots on his property. He runs a company that makes plastic bottles in an old interurban car barn.
Barrels around the building that can hold 3,000 gallons collect rain and ground water to irrigate the plants.
"I just come out and steal the tomatoes," Jeck joked.
mferenchik@dispatch.com